


how love fled

by preromantics



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Break Up, Future Fic, Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-11
Updated: 2011-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:06:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the NPM exchange.</p><p>But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you,<br/>And loved the sorrows of your changing face;<br/>And bending down beside the glowing bars,<br/>Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled<br/>And paced upon the mountains overhead<br/>And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.</p><p>- excerpt from When You Are Old by WB Yeats.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how love fled

**Author's Note:**

> Original LJ posting date: 4/15/11.

"I could have walked in here  _drunk,_  and I still would have known this was Rachel Berry's wedding."

Kurt doesn't turn around in his seat, though he straightens up on instinct. He knew Blaine was at the wedding, it wasn't hard to spot him at the ceremony, wasn't even that hard to stick in the middle of everyone and avoid him entirely. He knew before the wedding that he would most likely be there, even. Finn had told him, looking sort of awkward about having to tell him, standing next to the refrigerator Kurt's apartment and maybe trying to look smaller than usual behind it. (It didn't work.)

"Be glad you didn't walk in drunk," Kurt says, though he still doesn't turn, "you might have kissed the bride and ended up all over page six."

Blaine doesn't say anything back for a moment, not that Kurt wants him to, not that Kurt would know what to say in return. 

"I was going for a witty remark about the awful star theme," Blaine says, "but, you're right, page six isn't really my thing." 

Finn is sitting next to him at their table, and for most of the night he's been angled out towards the dance floor, getting up occasionally with some of their old friends and dancing, just like Kurt, but returning quicker than anyone else. When Blaine walks away, Kurt feels a little vindicated, but Finn catches the way he looks down at his glass of champagne and swills what's left at the bottom, the rest of it gone flat. 

"You know he's only here --" Finn starts, but Kurt shakes his head. 

"Finn," he says, "it's not something I want to open up right now." It's been four years. Four years and a handful of months since he and Blaine ended, camped out on Blaine's dorm room bed and not talking because there was nothing left to say, just laying side by side on top of the blankets, waiting until the last minute before Kurt's bus came Kurt had seen him once or twice in-between without really meaning to, in passing, but it hadn't -- it definitely wasn't something Kurt wanted to think about, not anymore. 

"I'm just saying," Finn says, "you could've at least turned around."

Kurt raises an eyebrow at him, though he's not as into it as usual. 

"I know," Finn says, and though Kurt would usually dismiss Finn's attempts at sympathy, over Finn's shoulder he watches Rachel behind them dancing in her brilliant white dress and letting people twirl her in turn and thinks back to beginning of the day they had both spent drinking a little in his kitchen over breakfast and can't bring himself to do much more than twist his mouth up in some sort of grin.

The next time, Kurt is ready for it when Blaine slides into the chair next to him, leaning forward so he's mostly talking against the back of Kurt's neck. "Come take a walk with me," Blaine says. 

Kurt had watched Blaine make his rounds, eyeing the table where he and Finn were sitting, and he'd waited, thinking too many things at once to settle on anything at all. He grips the stem of his wine glass just a little too tightly and on his opposite side, Finn catches his eye and nods, gesturing under the table cloth for Kurt to get up. "It's raining," Kurt says, turning around enough to see Blaine's profile. 

"It stopped," Blaine says, simple and without much of an expression. He stands and steps around to the front of Kurt's chair, extending a hand. "I just -- would you? Please?" 

Kurt looks at Blaine's hand and closes his eyes for the barest of a second, memories pushed to the forefront of his mind too quickly to sort through. He stands without taking Blaine's hand, smoothing down the front of his suit and pausing when Blaine doesn't drop his extended arm for a moment, like he's waiting, still. "Shall we?" Kurt asks, maybe with a little too much edge, because Blaine's hand drops quickly, falling behind his back, linking with his own other hand. 

Kurt follows behind him, both of them darting around people with familiar faces and unforgettable faces and unfamiliar ones, too. By the time they get out to the deck, the crowd is thinner and Kurt can't stop looking at the way Blaine's elbow is crooked out from his side, wondering if it would be just as easy to slip his arm through and hold on as it used to be. 

Blaine stops at the stairs that go out to the lawn, waiting for Kurt to step into place beside him before they hit the lawn, and Kurt -- he can't help it, standing right next to him, an invite and something he doesn't know what to feel about all at once, but he curls his arm around Blaine's and they take the stairs together. When they hit the lawn, Blaine exhales all at once and Kurt can feel it where his forearm is pressed against Blaine's ribs. 

"Thank you," Blaine says. 

They're walking forward, through the line of lights that dot the lawn, heading out towards the edge of the water and stopping at the dock there. Kurt figures they'll make it to the edge and decide what to do then, so he walks. 

"For what?" Kurt asks, and despite the music behind them and the slap of waves on the stone holding wall in front of them, his voice comes out quiet, a little more reserved than he means it to. 

"Coming outside," Blaine says, looking forward. "I wanted some time with you."

Kurt breathes out and focuses on where he can see the lights of the country club deck reflected on the bay. 

"I only came because I knew you'd be here," Blaine says, still looking forward when Kurt looks sidelong at him.

"Blaine," Kurt says, because that's easy. Blaine stop talking, Blaine stop existing, stop being something to think about far too often. 

They walk for a few minutes, down the rolling lawn to the edge of the bay, built up against a stone wall with a dock jutting out at the middle, and Blaine hums somewhere in his throat. 

"This is nice," he says, softly. "Out here, I mean, not just --"

"Did you want to talk?" Kurt asks, trying to keep the edge out but mostly failing, Blaine tightening the grip of his arm. 

"We don't have to," Blaine says. "Mostly I just wanted to walk, I guess. Get out of there and see you without everyone around. You look nice, tonight."

They walk to the edge of the dock and Blaine steers them away, back up into the grass. It's darker by the water, the lights not reaching out as far, and Kurt thinks there should be more noise, even just from the waves, but mostly the air around them is still, no breeze now that the rain from earlier in the day has stopped.

"This is -- we didn't work, before," Kurt says, because they've been quiet for too long and Blaine is starting to hum something Kurt hasn't heard in ages. He's got his arm just as tightly pressed in the crook of Blaine's elbow as Blaine's arm against his own. 

Blaine laughs, full and rich at Kurt's change in conversational direction, and he pauses in his walk and Kurt jerks to a stop, falling back against his arm and bending with him when Blaine leans and starts to slip his shoes off, for no reason Kurt can discern. 

"God, no," Blaine says, peeling off his socks one-handed, with Kurt bent down to accommodate the shift in their arms still together. "Kurt, we worked. We worked so  _well_." He sounds more like himself.

Kurt laughs, at that. He could bring up a hundred reasons why they ended their relationship four years ago, he could. He can't think of them now, not with the way one of Blaine's hands is curling around his ankle at an awkward angle, pulling his foot up.

"Take your shoes off," Blaine says.

Kurt wiggles his foot, mostly to get Blaine's hand off his skin. Everything feels -- strange. "You're kidding," he says. 

Blaine stands and straightens up, untangling his arm from Kurt's and moving to stand in front of him. "Just do it," he says, "the grass is wet and it feels  _amazing._ " 

Kurt steps back and his arm feels weighted down, no longer being held up, and he doesn't  _need_  anyone to hold his arm up, this is -- not what he wants to be dealing with right now. He can just barely hear the music from the country club behind them, floating out over the yard to fade away out across the bay. "You're drunk," he says, plainly, because Blaine is looking right at him, his face sort of earnest and for a moment he looks young, like the Blaine that Kurt met when he was sixteen, and he can't rationalize it any other way. 

For a moment, Blaine's face stays in it's grin, but Kurt maps out the changes as it falls. He has new lines on his face, nothing too noticeable, nothing that will show for decade or two, but Kurt can tell. Blaine has changed, and it's not like Kurt thought he had stayed in stasis while Kurt went along living, but Kurt had never bothered to adjust his mental image. 

"I'm not," Blaine says. "I had a glass of champagne, and it was pretty shitty and too dry, but I drank it anyway and toasted the happy couple -- and I watched you when Rachel made her grand entrance and I watched you during all the toasts."

Kurt and Finn had gone through a bottle of champagne before the wedding, poured liberally into orange juice until the term mimosa didn't really even apply. It had been some sort of extra years-late bonding experience, after Finn's Blaine bombshell and because Kurt knew it would be weird for Finn, to be someone other than the groom at a wedding he had maybe thought about at some point in the past. They hadn't really talked over their drinks as much as looked sullenly at each other and laughed each time they caught each other's expression -- but, Kurt had more than just a glass of champagne today. It was late now, though, and right now he mostly felt drained and maybe a little achy. 

"Take off your shoes," Blaine says, again, quiet and closer than Kurt expects. "Feel the grass."

Kurt breathes out a little laugh and shakes his head. "Fine," he says, shrugging with it and bending down to reach his feet. Blaine gets there first, though, kneeling down on the damp grass despite the fact it will probably soak through the knees of his suit, and lifting each of Kurt's feet to take of his shoes and socks. 

Kurt has to steady himself for balance with a hand on Blaine's shoulder below him, and for a moment that feels nice, nicer than the way Blaine's arm hooked with his own had felt easy and tight. Kurt's fingers curl into the material at the back of Blaine's suit, a tailored dark blue that Kurt wonders if he wore on purpose, and his knuckles brush the edges of Blaine's hair, longer than Kurt remembers it ever being. He keeps his hand still and in place, even when Blaine sets his shoes to the side with his socks tucked inside and rises.

Blaine looks at him, expectant. "It's wet," Kurt says, looking down at the grass where his feet disappear into shadows, "and cold."

Blaine laughs and presses against his side briefly in a way that makes Kurt want to edge away just as much as it makes him want to lean forward. "Here, let's --" Blaine says, after Kurt spends a moment awkwardly lifting his feet up and down on the grass, uncomfortable and feeling strange and tight in his chest. "We can sit on the dock."

Kurt gladly follows, and Blaine sits down parallel to the shore in the middle of it, leaning back on his arms and looking up at Kurt standing above him. 

"Come down here," Blaine says. He looks away from Kurt, instead looking up at the sky, clear save for a few clinging rain clouds and mostly blank of stars, the lights from the city miles away still drowning them out. It's a much different sky from Ohio.

Kurt sits down and slides down on his back carefully -- his suit is pretty expensive, and he can't really see the state of the dock with the bad lighting -- and when he gets all the way down, Blaine's hand comes out and rests against his wrist, enough to make Kurt hold his breath, stupidly, for just a moment. 

They don't talk, not for a while, and Kurt looks up at the sky until he can't anymore, wanting to turn and see Blaine's face instead but also not wanting to at all, and closing his eyes instead as Blaine's hand moves down from his wrist and over his knuckles, slowly wrapping his fingers around Kurt's and squeezing. It feels simple and normal and a little too much like Blaine has his fingers squeezing wrapped around Kurt's entire chest, instead. 

"Where are you staying?" Kurt asks, breaking the silence between them and returning the pressure of Blaine's fingers around his own because it's startlingly easy to get the muscles in his hands to move on autopilot, to shift until his fingers are settled just right between Blaine's own, the warmth of it running up his entire arm, down his spine. 

"In the city," Blaine says, and Kurt turns and blinks open his eyes to look at the profile of Blaine's face, his lashes fanned out in shadows across his cheeks with the way the light from the country club is thrown out across the lawn behind them. 

"My city?" Kurt asks, which sounds a little ridiculous, but for the past four years he's separated everything in his life in some way into his things and, well, Blaine's things. Blaine had his city, three timezones away. Kurt had New York.

Blaine's lips curl up, though he's still looking at the stars. "When did you decided to run for office?" he asks, and Kurt feels his own mouth quirk up, unable to catch it in time when Blaine turns towards him. "I'd vote for you, you know."

"I don't have much faith in your voting abilities," Kurt says. "But, thank you."

They stay quiet for a few minutes, breathing in the salt. Kurt wants to turn back to the sky, because at least it was safer to pretend there were stars there what weren't entirely blocked out by the metropolitan light grid. Looking right at Blaine it's easy to pretend he sees a lot of things he probably doesn't.

"I'm looking for an apartment," Blaine says, after a moment. "Most of my stuff is already in storage out here."

"You didn't say anything," Kurt says. Blaine's face twists a little in surprise and Kurt realizes how ridiculous it was to even say that at all. 

"I didn't think you wanted to know," Blaine says, evenly, and that stings a little more than it should. 

"I would've listened," Kurt says. It's the most honest thing he can say. He probably wouldn't have known what to do, knowing Blaine was going to be so close, a million or so odd people in a small square radius of miles between them every day, still closer than they'd been for years. 

"Would you have?" Blaine asks. 

Kurt turns and looks back toward the sky. "What are you going to do out here?" he asks. He can feel Blaine shrug against his side. 

"Sing," Blaine says. "I thought about trying the cruise ship circuit, to get out and explore a little bit, but when I got to New York for interviews, something made me -- I decided to stay."

"So you'll be around," Kurt says, watching the shadow of a cloud move above them. "And I'll be around."

He can barely make out the way Blaine reaches over, his hand hovering over Kurt's side, but Kurt can definitely feel the light pressure of Blaine's fingers when he finally settles his hand down, running them under the lapel of Kurt's jacket before dragging them back. 

"I've missed you," Blaine says, one rushing breath, and Kurt's entire body stills. 

"Don't," he says, "that's not fair." 

Blaine laughs, low and brief. "It's not, I know, but it's true. I've missed you for four years, is that stupid? Probably. I still miss you. I thought maybe --"

"Don't," Kurt repeats, though, fuck, he wants to hear everything Blaine is saying, wants to close his eyes and pretend they're back in time, lying on Blaine's dorm bed and instead of not saying anything at all, Blaine is saying  _this_. 

"Maybe it's too late," Blaine says, and suddenly he's leaning up and hovering over Kurt, blocking his view of the sky and the stars that don't exist, "but I wanted you to know." 

"You're so --" Kurt starts, but he gives up and closes his eyes, blocking Blaine from his view and breathing out, steady. He knows Blaine is still there, watching his face, and that if Kurt stays still for long enough eventually he'll roll back over onto the dock and maybe even get up and walk away, and that will be that. 

Except, Kurt's pretty sure that's not what he wants, not at all. Things like this aren't easy -- Kurt can't wake up one morning, check his email and halt a shipping crisis and drink a bottle of champagne with his step-brother and watch one of his friends get married and all the sudden also have someone back in his life who he never wanted to leave in the first place. Life doesn't work like that. Kurt's working as a buyer at Barney's because it's a good job and because Broadway doesn't get handed to anyone on a plate, he knows life doesn't work out the way he wants it to. 

"Blaine," Kurt says, quiet and with his eyes still shut. "It's been four years and a few months --"

"I know," Blaine says, and there is something in his voice that Kurt forgets how to place. "Trust me, I --"

"Shut up," Kurt says, cutting him off and opening his eyes, caught up in the way Blaine is blinking wide-eyed down at him. "I wasn't finished." 

Kurt breathes out again, and suddenly it's a lot harder to talk with his eyes open, with Blaine so close, his breath warm on Kurt's face. "Four years and a few months and sometimes I wake up and wonder if you're going to be in the kitchen when I walk out, because -- I don't know, I'd spent so much time planning that and it never happened. We never happened."

"We had three years," Blaine says, soft, his mouth staying parted around his words. 

"Wasted years," Kurt says, though he doesn't mean it, not in a way he can explain rationally. 

"I wouldn't trade those years for anything," Blaine says. 

Kurt closes his eyes again and stays quiet, because it's easier. He's been taking the easy route more often, lately, with his career and his goals and the guys he occasionally takes home just because it feels good to be wanted. He never liked the easy route, though, so he opens his eyes and doesn't blink away from Blaine's face. 

"I've missed you, too," he says, evenly. 

The way Blaine swallows above him, the way his smile is sort of sad and slow to come on makes Kurt want to look away again, do the easy thing. "I've felt ridiculous for every moment spent missing you," Blaine says, his voice a little rough now, "because every time it also felt like waiting."

"Blaine," Kurt says, quiet, almost a question. 

"I --" Blaine starts, but he shakes his head once and leans down, his breath ghosting against Kurt's lips before they meet, a dry and warm press of pressure until Kurt opens his mouth, tilting his head back just enough for the slide to melt into perfect, familiar. 

They keep kissing like that, Blaine bent over him and opening his mouth with his tongue slick against Kurt's bottom lip, but it's slow and not at all as desperate as the tightness in Kurt's chest feels, coiled tight and heavy, loosing with every pass of Blaine's hand against his cheek, his jaw, the controlled and measured movement of his fingers, his tongue. 

Kurt makes a small noise into his mouth because it's a little too much, and Blaine leans back, twisted awkwardly on his side but still over Kurt, their hands still twisted together, tight. Blaine doesn't say anything, but his expression says more than Kurt can think to say himself; a little wide-eyed and shocked, but soft around the edges, something bright lurking underneath.

"Are you taking the train back?" Kurt asks after a minute, voice steady around his words even though he feels a little breathless and suddenly very young. 

"I am," Blaine says, nodding. 

"Don't go back to where ever you're staying," Kurt says, quickly before he can stop himself. "Just, if you want, you could --"

"Yes. Definitely, that," Blaine says, and then he's ducking down and kissing Kurt again, just a light drag of his lips that goes on long enough for Kurt to lose track of time. "We can have breakfast in the morning," Blaine says when he moves back, not getting very far with the way Kurt's hands are bunching up the material stretched tight over his shoulder blades, something Kurt barely noticed he had started to do. 

"That's generally when people eat breakfast," Kurt says. Blaine laughs in a gust of air and leans in, brushing their noses together. 

"You haven't changed," he says.

"I have," Kurt says, automatic, but less defensive than probably would have earlier in the night. 

"So have I," Blaine says, "but you're still you -- the Kurt I fell --"

Kurt leans his neck up and cuts Blaine off with a quick press of his lips. He's not ready for that. When he looks up at Blaine, he thinks about being in love, trying to pinpoint when he finally fell out of love with Blaine and unable to come up with anything. Kurt knows -- has spent too much time thinking about it, really -- that he's not still in love, but watching Blaine's near-content expression, taking up his entire view, Kurt think's he's probably only a few steps from stumbling back into it. The ease of it, the way a half hour can just make Kurt  _feel_  -- something, whatever -- again is a little frightening.

Blaine stands first, stretching long and languidly, and Kurt watches him upside-down, unable to not smile just a little to himself. When Blaine extends a hand down to him he takes it, letting Blaine pull him up and not moving back when Blaine just pulls him all the way against his chest. 

"Hey," Blaine says, quiet against his ear. Kurt waits for him to elaborate, but he doesn't, just leans against Kurt, tucking his head against Kurt's shoulder and starting to sway, humming low in his chest in a way Kurt can feel and hear at the same time, strains of something familiar and a little bit ridiculous. 

"Hi," Kurt says back, mostly pressed against the side of Blaine's head. It's the greeting they never got to at the ceremony or inside the country club, and it feels like a beginning, maybe, but also like catching up in the middle of something. 

They sway out on the dock for a long time, and afterwards they pick up their shoes from the ground and walk back up to the club deck barefoot, Kurt taking time to dig his toes into the grass every time Blaine's hand squeezes his own. 

In the morning maybe they'll talk over crepes, if Kurt feels like making them, or maybe they'll just lay together on Kurt's couch or on the guest bed or maybe in Kurt's bed, and maybe they won't say anything at all, not yet. Blaine will be there in the morning, though, and that's new and different and not at all new at the same time. 

"The stars, though," Blaine whispers, when they reach the open doors at the deck that lead back inside, the music coming through much louder now. "I mean, honestly."

Kurt laughs, stepping over star-shaped confetti on the floor and feeling it stick to his feet, glancing up at the reception area, a gigantic lit-up star taking up at least ten feet of floor space, and he leans into Blaine's side. "I know," he says. 

Blaine shakes his head and Kurt wants to lean over and press his lips against Blaine's temple, but he doesn't, not yet. Blaine catches him looking, though, and they share a smile that's not anything near laughing, just simple and a little knowing and a little sad, maybe. Kurt feels sort of full from it.

"She'll look back and learn from this," Blaine says, shaking his head but still sharing the same, small grin with Kurt. 

Kurt can't help but think Blaine isn't entirely talking about Rachel and stars, and he thinks about learning and re-learning Blaine and maybe himself, too, and it's not the worst thing he's thought about all night, so he squeezes Blaine's hand one more time and they talk the rest of the way back inside in an entirely different way from how they had walked out.


End file.
